Channel media accreditation requests through GOC – Nunoo Mensah

In bid to avoid visa frauds and scandals in the future, journalist accreditation for all International Olympic Committee (IOC) or Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) related events must be done through the National Olympic Committees (NOC) or Commonwealth Games Association) CGA of the various countries and not directly with individual media houses, President of the Ghana Olympic Committee, Ben Nunoo Mensah has said.

The new measure, it is believed, would help avoid the case of Gold Coast where various media houses all over the world dealt directly with GOLDOC through their own accreditation Laison Officers (ALO).

Speaking Kasapa Sports, the GOC President explained that “there were few journalists who outsmarted the system and included names of people who were not journalists.

“I was at the just ended IOC Integrity in Sports Seminar in Abuja and one of the suggestions we all embraced is that in the near future all media accreditation for GOC-related events must be channeled through them to avoid visa frauds and scandals.”

He continued that “to curtail such things there is always the need to deal with the mother GOC or else people will continue to abuse the system.

“Although, there are credible journalists who did due diligence to the accreditation system, there are also few ones who abused the system and lots of lessons have been learnt from this.

“There has also been a lot of misinformation about this whole accreditation process and people are pointing fingers at the GOC but to set the record straight, GOC never had hands with the accreditation processes because the Commonwealth Games organizers dealt directly with the individual media houses (Media Liaison Officers) to facilitate their travel to Australia,” Nunoo Mensah added.

He also commended the Chef de mission of the Games, Mohammed Sahnoon, for controlling the GOC system to avoid third parties who in their ‘own crook ways’ tried to hack into their system.